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The sky is blue is something that is a natural phenomenon. You would not say
空は青い unless it was out of the norm, say at night or on a new planet.
New as in events. When I say that "my shoes" are dirty, whether they've been dirty or not determines if I use ga or wa. If my mom tells me over and over again they're dirty, she's going to use "ga". If I get mud all over my shoes before school and walk in, everyone would use "wa".
Ga can also show emphasis when the same word that ga marks is repeated.
There are several usages in there. They are mixed. Trust me, they're there. There were five examples of this. The most common pattern is "ima ga ima".
You can translate sentences that end in the final base, called the Shuushikei, as the non-past tense or the predicate. I thought that for those that the predicate would be most appropriate because no context was given around it. If you were to look up those phrases as such in a dictionary, that's what you would find. So, if you typed in "to rust", you would get sabi ga shoujiru and other equivalent expressions.
The particle wa by all means since its conception is emphatic. There isn't limitation on what kind of emphasis it gives. Its basic understanding is to show the topic of a Japanese sentence, and that in itself is emphatic compared to the simple subject marker role of ga. Bound, or adverbial particles in more modern classifications, are notorious for being the most emphatic particles, and the term was defined in Lesson 2 and there should be little blue links on the words that take you to where they were mentioned.
今日は情報が多い。
I think it is completely fair to use the reading of the website in examples. It ties in great and makes a sentence that discusses the topic. And, I have to promote it within the site itself as well. 
Wa and ga must never be together, that means next to each other. Ga goes on vacation and comes back in play when more obvious things are said.
I don't want to get into an argument about the lacking of these lessons, because quite frankly Tae Kim only has a line for each. Nevertheless, I do have the burden to make the best to present everything. A Japanese dictionary gives right. I mention the grammatical points you would find in any standard Japanese dictionary.
As a stand alone sentence, you can't tell whether using either ga or wa is wrong, in the sense of marking the noun of focus, without further context. There are some things that they naturally don't make sense with their definitions alone. Why would someone say "yozora wa kuroi" when everyone that has ever breathed knows the sky is black. Now, if for some reason there was a ton of light and now the sky was a grayish-whitish color, you would hear "yozora wa hai'iro desu ne"...etc.
Wa is a bound particle because it doesn't have to grammatically be there. Before it's advent, it was left out. It is also considered an adverbial particle because it is literally saying "as for".
Your questions are good, and the answers can help make the lesson better. Your entry from that other dictionary can be implied from my text however. If, again, I walked in a classroom covered in mud, before anything is said the listeners have insight on what is going to be said. Think of a rumor going around a campus. When everyone is telling people for the first time, "wa" is used. But, as in the example in Lesson 9 showed with Hanako, everyone "knows" she hates studying. She's obnoxious about it and shows aggression towards her work in school. When she's said that she hates studying, ga or wa can be used. Ga could be used because it's obvious and firm. Wa can be used simply because of the emphatic nature of the discussion and or attitude of the people presumably frustrated with her.
Things and or events that are new are still known to a slight degree simply because you just described its status, no? New shoes are at your mall and everyone is waiting to get a hold of them. When someone is describing the shoes, what particle do you think they're using?
Hits are very important for google ranking and getting new people to discover the site. 10 more hits equates to 1 to 2 more google searches. On a day when there is 100 hits, there is around 5~7 searches. When there is 200, there is around 15. The majority of people that join and become good members normally come from these searches. So, the people here already know about my site for the most part. Whether they need to use it or not, just the helping hand can go a long ways for my project.
I hope all of this was insightful, and thank you for the important questions about ga and wa because since you're a beginner, you definitely want to get these core grammatical concepts down.
I was thinking perhaps you were refuting the definition of the actual word nogi. It is a big coincidence I must say, making the name all the more fitting. I have 18 more lessons to scrap romanization out. The student is going to be kicked out of the nest sooner.
imabi wrote:
It is a big coincidence I must say, making the name all the more fitting.
Little things like this are what makes life interesting. Consequently, I firmly believe that linguistics is one of the most rewarding contexts to study Japanese in. I certainly think it's a good idea to make potential users of your site aware of some of the linguistic terms they may encounter on their journey towards fluency. In my opinion, you should not cut back on those terms but rather explain them to the best of your ability, although that may pose some problems for members with previous knowledge who may stumble upon your site and approach some of the later lessons.
I guess there's just no way of pleasing everyone 
Fleskmos wrote:
imabi wrote:
It is a big coincidence I must say, making the name all the more fitting.
Little things like this are what makes life interesting. Consequently, I firmly believe that linguistics is one of the most rewarding contexts to study Japanese in. I certainly think it's a good idea to make potential users of your site aware of some of the linguistic terms they may encounter on their journey towards fluency. In my opinion, you should not cut back on those terms but rather explain them to the best of your ability, although that may pose some problems for members with previous knowledge who may stumble upon your site and approach some of the later lessons.
I guess there's just no way of pleasing everyone
That is really true. I have been making sure to keep the lingo for later on. It's what does make some people with experience stumble. It's like going to calculus and finding out there is a calculus description which more or less means the same thing as stating the obvious.
Conjunctive verb is not a good way to describe that Joshua. The Ren'youkei there is the reason why "and" is implied, and other instances of conjunctives involve conjunctives themselves and conjunctive particles which do not always mean "and".
I have sometimes when I personally think it is incredibly easy to get lost in translation and what not bolded items. You may have noticed that even in explanations things are sometimes bolded, italicized, or underlined. I don't know about different colors because of the color of the template, but I could definitely consider bolding more things. I have noticed though that if you do excessively through a lesson, it makes a negative effect on visual appeal. And, what I have wondered is if I did bold them, would I need to underline the item in the original text, in the kana/roomaji line, translation, or all of the above. If I underlined the same thing all the way through it would make the page filled with bolded text. Perhaps limit it to the translation which is the hardest part?
Last edited by imabi (2012 January 07, 7:15 pm)
